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The company that poured the high-security concrete superstructure for 1 World Trade Center says that it’s struggling to stay afloat after the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey refused to pay $87 million for services rendered, the New York Daily News reported yesterday. A business entity tied to Collavino Construction Company, one of the main contractors on the Lower Manhattan tower, has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, claiming that it can’t afford to pay its suppliers until it’s been paid. The Port Authority tapped Collavino, a Canadian company with offices in New Jersey, in 2007 to construct the 105-floor concrete superstructure for the iconic building, according to the bankruptcy filing. The specially reinforced concrete it poured was designed to protect the above-ground portion of the building from a street-level blast. 

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis plans to sell its chancery office and three other properties to help pay creditors in bankruptcy, chief financial officer Tom Mertens told a creditors' committee meetingon Tuesday, according to MPRNews.org yesterday. He estimated the properties could be sold for "maybe a max of around $11 million" but said the archdiocese hasn't determined the exact amount. The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis filed for bankruptcy protection in January amid more than a hundred claims by people who said they were sexually abused by Catholic priests.

Bankrupt RadioShack Corp. spent an emergency loan on fees and other payments to favored lenders in what creditors said was a departure from a judge’s orders, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The judge overseeing the bankruptcy approved RadioShack’s borrowing of $10 million on Feb. 10 to allow it to make essential payments. Instead, the company’s budget shows that it used $3.2 million for interest and fees to select lenders and almost $8.7 million for fees and retainers to advisers, a committee of creditors said in a court filing yesterday. The electronics retailer also intends to make unauthorized payments this month of around $38.4 million to lenders who agreed to advance money solely to pay their earlier loans, the committee said. RadioShack has been met with harsh criticism of its borrowing plan and a deal to sell its best stores to its biggest shareholder, Standard General LP, which arranged a large pre-bankruptcy loan. The creditors’ committee has now asked the judge to rewrite his temporary approval to clarify what he was authorizing. 

The shuttered Revel Casino Hotel in Atlantic City, N.J., again has a buyer — and again it's Florida developer Glenn Straub, who was lured back by a discounted price of $82 million, Reuters reported yesterday. The deal follows two failed sale agreements for the casino hotel, which cost $2.4 billion to build and is struggling to emerge from the second bankruptcy since it opened in 2012. Straub's previous purchase agreement was dogged by disputes with restaurants and nightclubs that operated in the hotel, which was distinguished by its eye-catching design. The developer said yesterday that he would invest $100 million to expand the exterior of the building and making the lobby more accessible. Straub said his three-year plan to integrate "quality of life and sports will help change the image of Atlantic City from a predominantly gaming destination back to a world-renowned resort town." Straub's Polo North Country Club Inc. has deposited the full purchase price with Revel.

Following the collapse of yet another deal to sell Atlantic City, N.J.’s defunct Revel Casino Hotel, time may be running out for the resort to find a savior, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Revel, which has seen two bankruptcy court-approved deals fall through, must once again begin discussions with potential buyers. And with no other proposed buyer yet to emerge, Revel’s continued survival is heavily dependent on primary lender Wells Fargo & Co.’s willingness to continue to provide funding. Though Revel shut its doors in September leaving thousands out of work, millions of dollars in legal expenses and utility payments continue to accrue each month. Much of that has been paid for by the Wells Fargo loans. “Wells Fargo has to make this calculated decision about whether to fund losses with the hope they will be able to make up those losses with an increased purchase price,” said Joel Levitin, a lawyer at Cahill, Gordon & Reindel who isn’t involved in the case. Shaun Martin, Revel’s chief restructuring officer, said at a hearing last week that no formal offers have been made for Revel, but that there have been “a lot of inquiries.”

A Miami federal judge has given TD Bank until Thursday to pay $67 million to a group of investors in disbarred attorney Scott Rothstein's failed $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme, the Daily Business Review reported today. U.S. District Judge Marcia G. Cooke's order could finally bring an end to a three-year battle over the $32 million in compensatory damages and $35 million in punitive damages awarded by a jury to Texas-based Coquina Investments LLC. TD Bank's motion asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to stay Cooke's order was denied by a three-judge panel on Friday.

Two major groups of creditors have mounted attacks on the debt topping Energy Future Holdings Corp.'s $42 billion pile of unpaid bills as part of a campaign to claw back $2.4 billion or more collected by senior lenders, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Threats of lawsuits arrived on Friday, as Energy Future struggles to forge a consensus on a path out of bankruptcy. The Texas energy company has circulated a chapter 11 exit plan framework designed to operate as a focus for talks and is up against a June 23 deadline to propose an emergence scheme.

A man in bankruptcy can run from his creditors, but he can’t hide from obligations to his ex-wife, as former billionaire Samuel Wyly learned last week, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. Wyly, who helped build companies including arts-and-crafts retailer Michaels Stores Inc., filed for chapter 11 protection in October to fend off an impending judgment in a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A Manhattan jury found that Wyly and his deceased brother, Charles, used offshore trust accounts to trade secretly in the stock of four companies on whose boards they sat. Samuel Wyly’s former wife, Torrie Steele, sued in bankruptcy court in Dallas, claiming that his responsibility to pay her $500,000 a year is a support obligation that’s not wiped out by chapter 11. 

Victims of Bernard Madoff's massive fraud are not entitled to inflation or interest adjustments on their claims, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday, in a decision that could speed the return of more than $1 billion to the swindler's former customers, Reuters reported on Friday. Irving Picard, the trustee liquidating Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, said that he will seek permission from a federal bankruptcy judge to distribute that sum, on top of $7.2 billion paid out so far, as soon as possible. Picard has kept the additional money in reserve because of litigation over whether former customers deserved "time-based" damages on claims arising from Madoff's Ponzi scheme that was uncovered in 2008. In Friday's decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said that because the Securities Investor Protection Act, a federal law that helps victims of failed brokerages, did not address such damages, Picard had the flexibility to choose the fairest method to determine the size of valid claims.